Victorian Botany: An Introduction

Botany was among the most popular of the nineteenth century sciences. Men,
women and children all joined in the frantic hunt for plants, and the hedgerows
were full of people cataloguing mosses, identifying ferns and pressing flowers.
This popularity had five main sources:

Botany was easy  especially during the decades when the Linnaean or
Sexual System of classification was in widespread use because it made most
plants easy to identify.

Botany was cheap  it required only a few, inexpensive tools: a tin
box, known as a vasculum (pl. vascula) in which freshly-picked plants were
placed; a small hand lens for identification; a book or two with which to
identify and classify plants; and, a supply of clean paper used to dry, press
and mount the plants.

Botany was pious  the study of nature was a key aspect of natural
theology, studying the creator's handiwork was supposed to confirm both his
existence and his goodness and plants were considered especially appropriate
for children and women to collect, since one could study them without having
to observe animals copulating or killing each other.

Botany was genteel and ladylike  it was widely considered unfeminine
to kill or dissect animals, and even the bloodless pursuit of entomology required
the collectors to asphyxiate the butterflies they gathered. By contrast, botany
was readily associated with traditional feminine skills such as flower-arranging
and flower-painting.

Botany was healthy  like other natural history pursuits, it offered
healthy, outdoor exercise and respectable opportunities in which to meet members
of the opposite sex, based on a common interest in rational and improving
activity. In many ways, botany was seen as a natural extension of the growing
middle-class interest in gardening.

However, all these factors created problems for the small but influential group
of Victorian botanists who wished to pursue full-time careers as botanists.
The very things that made botany popular for some participants threatened its
standing as a serious science in the eyes of others. One of the dominant themes
in Victorian botany is the struggle between a self-appointed, predominantly
male elite who were trying to redefine botany as a serious, "philosophical"
science and the vast majority who wanted simply to enhance their understanding
and enjoyment of flowers.